softly as i leave you
by mirajens
Summary: I'll take care of you tonight. But don't look for me when I'm gone in the morning.


**_softly as i leave you_**

 _._

 _._

Mirajane was not good at giving comfort. No one had ever asked her for any and she was never good at presenting any unsolicited kindness. Maybe once upon a time before cruel fate took too much from her (mother and father eaten alive by flames that started innocently enough until it swallowed up their home; Elfman and Lisanna erased from the world by two small bullets from the gun of an even smaller man who was a murderer for the pocket change of mere children sneaking out of the house for ice cream) she could be bothered with such charities. But maybe even then she was not so easy with her affections. She was borne from silver-tongued adults who got sick of her after a couple of months and passed her onto the next bitter stranger that would make her just a little bit like them, more and more each time. No, she was not a comforter. How could she be when she needed one herself?

But Laxus was a friend. The only friend she had, sometimes, when she was difficult to deal with and he cared naught because he was the same. The miserable find the like so it was just natural for them to come together, children turned sour by the world.

They weren't children now. At twenty-seven he was mature instead of the brusque, brash lad of youth and he filled out the stiff tuxedo he'd chosen to say goodbye to his mother in quite well. And at twenty-three, Mirajane grew into her large eyes and plump lips and wide hips though she was grown before her body turned into that of a woman's. It was too easy being an adult. No one gave her as much shit as when she was a child.

Her hand found Laxus' as the priest spoke the ceremonial eulogy: borrowed and thoroughly used. Makarov had not know his daughter-in-law well enough to spin any comfort for her mourners. The dead's husband was nowhere to be seen, fled from his crimes just before they could find that knife he'd stabbed into his wife four times. And Laxus could say nothing. His throat had been raw for days and he didn't trust himself to speak. What could he say to the box that held her mother? That he was sorry he refused to come home until his grandfather called him to her funeral? Everyone attending the mas already knew that; he'd heard the low whispers when he passed by.

He didn't say anything when Mirajane's thin fingers closed around his hand, her palm warm against his. His frigid stare remained on the fleur de lis punctuating the white wood of his mother's casket but Mirajane did get a response. The tightening of his grip on her, so full of anger, so desperate and intense. She wished she could reach up and wipe the sweat beading on his brow. She wished she could take him away and not let him watch the ground swallow up his mother.

But they were used to being helpless people. So he looked on ahead and she watched his lips get thinner with each shovelful of dirt tossed into the open ground.

* * *

That same night, they fell together in bed in a fashion that reminded her of two natural calamities colliding.

From one end: a storm. Laxus Dreyar bought with him the same intensity of skies pouring and wind howling, sweeping land up in devastation and tumult. When his hands touched the burning surface of her skin— first her leg, then the inside of it, then higher, Mirajane was sure she felt lightning roll over her body. Certainly the way he moved his fingers over her and into her felt like what she imagined being charged with electricity would be.

The dark of the room lent him a sense of foreboding she hadn't felt in a long time but the shine of moonlight through opened windows was what prevented the fright that usually came with it. Laxus was not gentle when he took her, and she didn't expect him to be. The way he grabbed and bit and licked and thrust was telling of the turmoil in him and she'd promised he could let it out on her.

( _"I'll take care of you tonight."_ )

And Mirajane, she was a volcanic eruption. Past the initial explosion, she was no longer fast or angry like the aftermath of hungry lava depicted in cartoons; the careful uncorking and the even more subtle overflow was quite calm. Burning, acrid, overdue, but calm. All the tension in her shoulders left in one lovely release, drawing sobs and moans from her lips. Her legs might tremble and her breathing might be worse but her hands didn't shake when they clamped down on his hips. When a volcano erupted, it was peaceful. While molten heat razed lands into barrenness, only the gentle crackling of embers eating debris could be heard. She allowed Laxus to be that harsh fire and she the gripes of the earth prompted by his undone.

( _"But don't look for me when I'm gone in the morning."_ )

So perhaps she was not the volcanic eruption but she was the wake of it. When Laxus shook above her and bit into her shoulder to muffle his yell, she told herself she was fine with that.

( _"We have until sunlight finds us."_ )

* * *

True enough, he was alone when he woke. A merciless beat pounded behind his eyes, reminding him of the many drinks he'd chugged back the night before as he tried to tide himself over the waves of guilt and misery that threatened to choke him. He remembered that hadn't been enough, because there were fragments of silver and skin and music in his ears. Mirajane taking him by the hand to the room he hadn't seen since he was a child. Her dancing and moving, above him, below, beside and in front. The gentleness of her hand sweeping back his sweat-soaked hair and the feel of her heat like a fever against his flesh. The quiet way she slipped out of his arms, out of his bed, into her dress and out of his life.

He tried sitting up but saw no point in it so he lay where he woke, blinking bleary eyes and regretting everything. He could still smell her on the sheets of his childhood bed and it was heady enough to distract him from his grief. Maybe it was better this way. Mirajane wanted no owner and he wanted no cage. Love didn't find people like them, but it did ruin them, and it left a bitter taste in their mouths.

 _It really is better this way,_ he tells himself, because it's what he needs to hear.

* * *

 **note:** i am back in my angst element and im kinda happy about it. i noticed i can only easily tap into angst mode when im sickly.


End file.
